January 22, 2024 | Supporting decarbonization of the iron and steel industry: Metso is expanding its testing capabilities by investing EUR 8 million to build a state-of-the-art DRI (direct reduced iron) Smelting Furnace pilot facility.
The pilot plant will be constructed in Pori, Finland, where Metso has one of its major R&D Centers serving the minerals and metals industry. The new facility will allow customer-specific pilot-scale testing to demonstrate the applicability and results of industrial-scale DRI smelting with Metso’s Outotec® DRI Smelting Furnace technology.
“Currently, the iron and steel industry accounts for about 8% of the global carbon dioxide emissions. With the tightening environmental regulations, the industry is looking for new innovations to reduce its carbon footprint. There has been a lot of interest towards the recently launched Metso’s Outotec® DRI Smelting Furnace. It substitutes traditional blast furnaces used in iron and steel making, and enables a significant reduction of emissions, when combined with a direct reduction plant,” notes Jyrki Makkonen, Vice President, Smelting at Metso.
A breakthrough technology
The new high-capacity Outotec® DRI Smelting Furnace, launched in 2022, is one of Metso’s breakthrough technologies and a major Planet Positive solution to support decarbonizing the iron and steel industry.
Combined with a direct reduction plant, Metso’s Outotec® DRI Smelting Furnace substitutes traditional blast furnaces in the production of hot metal, making it an optimal solution for primary steel producers aiming for a significant reduction in their CO2 emissions with minimal changes to the rest of the steel plant. The furnace can be integrated with Metso’s hydrogen-based CircoredTM process or other direct reduction processes.
“The investment into the DRI Smelting Furnace pilot facility supports the rapidly increasing customer demand for reliable testing when planning a transition to emissions-free smelting. With the pilot facility, we can reliably test various types of customer materials for industrial scale-up. The construction of this unique facility has started, and we expect to run the first tests and campaigns in the latter part of 2024. Currently, we are serving our customers with smaller scale laboratory tests,” explains Mari Lindgren, Director, Smelting Research & Development at Metso.
Metso is a frontrunner in providing sustainable technologies, end-to-end solutions and services for the aggregates, minerals processing and metals refining industries globally.
